You Always Hurt The One You Love

All children bicker and argue. Especially brothers and sisters. Of course the fights are over and done in short order and no one is the worse for the wear.

However every once in a while someone will accidentally hurt someone he/she really cares about and would not intentionally cause any harm. I have a few examples.

We used to play baseball when I was a child. A bunch of us would get together and pick sides. It is a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

I cannot run well so I learned very early to hit the ball hard and long. What I did not learn was to just drop the bat. I usually would simply let it go once the ball was in play.

One day my brother was the catcher and I was batting. I hit the ball and took off running. Of course my bat went somewhere else.

My bat hit my brother right in the mouth. He was bleeding around his teeth and his two front teeth were loosened.

Thank goodness his teeth were okay. I did not throw the bat after that day.

A few years later we were living on a dairy farm in Washington. I loved the rain there but that day we wanted to play baseball. So we played in one of the barns.

I was pitching and my uncle who is three years older than I am was catching. My brother (the one I hit in the teeth) was batting.

I threw the ball. My brother hit it.

The next thing I knew I was sitting cross-legged facing the back door of the barn.

My brother had hit a line drive directly into my nose. The force had spun me part way around and down. I do not remember anything except the sound of the ball when the bat hit it.

When I came to my nose was bleeding profusely. Of course it had been broken. I was told later that my screams could be heard all over the farm.

When I was in high school I would watch my brothers and sisters if my parents had to go somewhere. It was not something I minded. That is what the oldest child soes in a large family and I gave it no thought one way or the other. I just did it.

One evening while my parents were at a scout meeting I was watching the others. I put my baby brother in bed because he was sleeping. I went back into the living room to find my two oldest brothers beating the devil out of a younger brother.

I was truly certain that they were going to hurt him. I stepped between them to try to stop the fight.

I am still not sure how I separated them. I ended up in the kitchen with one of them on the floor. Now their wrath was directed toward me.

I picked up a kitchen chair and held it threateningly over his stomach. I told the other one, "If you take one more step I'll break this over his stomach!" (You know... brave talk.)

The standing brother got an evil look on his face and leaned my way. To let him know I meant business I feinted with the chair. He stopped.

The bad thing is that somehow I misjudged and did break the chair on my brother's stomach.

He was more mad than hurt . He got up and said, "I'm going to tell." And he left for the school down the street which is where our parents were.

I panicked. Afraid I would be the one in trouble I took the pieces of the chair and threw them into the back yard. I know. Why did I think no one would find the chair out there?

My parents came home. They were angry because they were interrupted at the meeting. Things were quiet when they got there.

I was sent to the back yard to retrieve the parts of the chair. The boys went to their rooms. I think Daddy eventually repaired the chair.

My son and his cousin were spending a weekend together at our house. They went off to play for a while. They finally stopped at a house where we used to live.

No one lived there at the time so they had a nice big yard to run around. There was an apple tree to climb.

I do not know why they decided to check the mailbox. But check it they did.

Neither of them was quite tall enough to reach inside the box. It was fairly high on the side of the front porch. My nephew stretched and reached. My son was trying to help but I think he probably mostly stood there.

My nephew finally grabbed a top part of the mailbox. It broke loose from the house and hit my son in the mouth.

They came home with my son's mouth bleeding. One of his front teeth was chipped.

He had a sore mouth for a few days but did not want to go to the dentist. He still has that chipped tooth as a remembrance from his cousin.

I am not a hunter but I like to target shoot. I am better with a hand gun than a rifle or shotgun for some reason.

I used to kill rats with a pellet gun. You have to hit them just right but it can be done.

Well my husband came across an old service pistol used by someone in the armed forces a long time ago. It was a nice gun. We were shooting cans off a trailer one day.

My husband and his friends were sitting off to my right having a few beers as I was shooting. One of my final shots hit the can which flew off the trailer.

I felt a pricking pain and looked down to see small pieces of metal in my finger. At the same time my husband was clasping his shoulder screaming, "You shot me!"

I laughed at him being so silly. Then I realized he was serious. He had a good sized piece of shrapnel in his shoulder. He was bleeding a bit.

The next day he took the pistol to a gunsmith he knew. The gunsmith said it was a miracle that the gun had not exploded while we were shooting it.

The cylinder rod was worn and it caused the cylinder holding the bullets to be loose. That meant that the bullet that caused all the damage had not shot straight out of the gun. Instead it grazed the side of the barrel and went in several directions. We were lucky that day.

My daughter's son was a handful for her. Even as a baby he demanded things and usually got his way. If not a tantrum was sure to follow.

One day my daughter was doing some thorough cleaning in her bedroom. She put her toddler son on the bed but soon he was wanting to help her go through things. She was deciding what to keep and what to discard. She told him to find something else to do.

Well a tantrum ensued. He grabbed the telephone from beside the bed and slammed it into her face.

Her nose was broken. Now she has a lump on her nose to match mine.

So you can see that carelessness can hurt those you care about.